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not only understood the general principles of ify 

 but was an adept in many of its most useful parts. 

 Passages are quoted from Plato, that are received 

 as axioms in chymistry. Galen knew that the 

 energy of fire might be applied to many useful 

 purposes, and that by the instrumentality of it, many 

 secrets in nature were to be discovered, which other* 

 wise must for ever be hid, and he gives many in* 

 stances of this in several places of his works. Dios- 

 corides hath transmitted to us many of the mineral 

 operations of the ancients, and in particular that of 

 extractin* quicksilver from cinnabar, which is iu ef 

 feet an exact description of distillation. 



8. The merit of the ancients in having arrived at 

 the knowledge of this important operation of chymis* 

 try, has been much called in question, which makes 

 it requisite to give particular attention to this passage 

 of Dioscorides, which not only indicates the prac- 

 tice of distillation among the ancients, bat shews that 

 this branch of chymistry derived from the Greek Ian- 

 guage the name of its principal instrument, the Alem- 

 bic. The word o/A&g ambix, according to Athenaeus 

 meant the cover of a pot, or any vessel wherein liquids 

 were set a boiling ; and the Arabs adopted this word 

 in applying it to the same subject, only adding the 

 syllable al to the beginning of it,, a syllable that enters 

 into the beginning of most of their words, whence 

 sprung the word Alembic. Pliny also gives the 

 same explanation as Dioscorides does, of the manner 

 of extracting quicksilver from cinnabar by distilla. 

 tion. And Seneca describes an instrument exactly 

 resembling the alembic, and which seems to have 

 been applied to the same use. But there are other 

 indications besides, full as sure as those, that distil- 

 lation had place among the ancients. For without 

 reckoning that brewing of beer implies the use of a 

 fttill, we find Aristotle observes, that oil could be 

 extracted from sea salt ; which never could be done 

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